Dangerous Intimacy

For the first time a documentary unflinchingly explores Mark Twain’s tumultuous last years. Featuring never before seen archival footage, interviews with noted scholars and Twain’s own recollections from his newly-published autobiography.

’Dangerous Intimacy’ reveals how the famous author enjoyed the attentions of a flirtatious and calculating young secretary, Isabel Lyon, who desperately wanted to marry him. With the help of Twain’s assistant and an Englishman named Ralph Ashcroft, Lyon exiled Twain’s daughter Jean, an epileptic, to a sanatorium and nearly succeeded in assuming complete control over the author’s household and estate. The narrative is drawn from a book by Karen Lystra and is also based on Twain’s uncensored autobiography which is being published now, one hundred years after his death, in three volumes by the University of California Press.

"Finally, an unflinching look at the triumphs and trials of Twain’s last years."
Allan Gribben, Co-Founder, The Mark Twain Circle of America.

This DVD is based on Mark Twain’s uncensored autobiography which is currently ranked number 7 on the NY Times Best Sellers List.

Twain embarked on his ’Final (and Right) Plan’ for telling the story of his life. His innovative notion - to ’talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment’ - meant his thoughts could range freely. The strict instruction that many of these texts remain unpublished for one hundred years meant that when they came out, he would be ’dead and unaware and indifferent,’ and that he was therefore free to speak his ’whole frank mind.’